This, of course, specifically ignores the conditions that the OP placed on his hyppothetical question.
No. Not without being a dad. I’m greedy. I want to experience what I see my friends doing: bouncing the baby and playing with them, taking the child to their first soccer game, reading them stories, explaining why the sky is blue, helping with homework, teaching them to fish, ride a bike, and drive a car. I want the love that parents feel for each other and their children. I want to be a real positive influence on someone else’s life. I want to take what I have learned from all the bad parenting and good parenting that has gone into messing me up and use it to give someone a stable foundation for their life. I want something meaningful and real in my life, not just to fuck some chick, knock her up and forget about it like a reptile. I could have done that in my 20s, but now that I’m over 40 I think I could do a really good job raising a child.
The real world problem with the hypothetical is that no matter that barriers you put up to insure the anononymity of the donation and regardless of the mothers stance of
a determined child may well want to contact their bio-daddy and will sometimes move heaven and earth to find them. Also, women have been known to change their minds about not needing or wanting the bio-dads resources if circumstances get tight. The The notion that you can “donate” sperm outside of a sperm bank firewall, with no future consequences are often upended when the child gets old enough to come looking for “daddy”, or Mommy is about to default on the mortgage and decides to reach out.
Hm. So it partially does. Thanks for pointing that out. I’m still sticking with it, however. There’s no guarantee that things can’t/won’t change and I still wouldn’t do it in any case.
Sure, but that’s half the fun of hypotheticals; they allow us to talk about specific issues while conveniently pushing aside some of the problems and conditions that might confront us in a real-world situation. When someone offers a hypothetical like the OP’s, it’s often precisely because they want to talk about something without the difficulties of the actual situation impeding the discussion.
Well in that case sperm for *everybody! * Take all you want! I’ll make more!
If the OP would have asked me this question before I had a son I would have said yes without hesitation.
Now that I have two sons, NO WAY. When I think about how much my current sons have enriched my life I wouldn’t be able to bare the thought that there is another child out there of mine NOT enriching my life.
Plus I’d feel guilty as hell if the intended parent(s) turned out to be A-holes.
Thanks SHAKES, interesting response.
I had trouble articulating my question. I guess what I’m looking for is the value men place on their genes. I mean, most men - if able - will spread their sperm far & wide. But usually we do so thinking it isn’t going to make a kid.
If we do know it’s going to make a kid, how willing are we to do it, and walk away? Sex or no sex involved. Doesn’t matter that much. We could be talking turkey baster, too.
Least Original User Name Ever, if it helps at all, imagine there is a rocket ship preparing to leave our solar system forever. A woman acquaintance/friend approaches you and asks for your seed so she can make a child. How easy/difficult is it for you to give your genes away?
Sperm is just sperm, right? It’s pretty darn easy. Almost like donating blood. Or is it?
Maybe I shouldn’t have excluded sperm banks, but sperm banks are purposely anonymous. This isn’t quite so anonymous.
Why? Is Sandra Bullock calling and asking for me again?
This is a different question, of course. This is in the “keeping the species going” vein. This is a good thing to do, in the eyes of the Big Picture.
No, it’s not keeping the species going. The ship has ten million people on board. This woman just wants your sperm and you’re never going to see the kid.
The real trouble is that you’re told there won’t be any moral claims- but will you feel any? I mean the general you, that is.
Sure, and people’s own moral considerations should be taken into account when answering the OP’s question.
But that’s not the same as saying, “Well, the woman could always come along later and demand money,” or whatever.
Sperm is relatively easily to donate, and there were truly “no strings attached” and someone was in need and desired your vital essence I think most men would be inclined to help out, but in modernity the hypothetical “no stings attached” is rarely seen. People want to connect, people change their minds, if a kids needs support money the state doesn’t give a rats ass about whatever handshake deal you had with the kid’s mom. You’re the bio-daddy and you will pay.
ON a practical level it’s less an issue of how much we “Value Our Genome” and more an issue of much we value a non-disrupted lifestyle. Donating sperm outside of the protections of a sperm bank is dicey and regardless of any “don’t worry” promises free range sperm chickens often come home to roost.
At first it’s tempting because of the seeming absence of reponsibility.
If never seeing the kid is the part of contention, then sure.
If it’s not just the kid and possible reprocussions, then still no.
I’ll simply rephrase what many have said here. If I am going to be a father, I will be a father in every sense of the word–I would hate to be nothing more than a stud.
Hmm, if that wasn’t clear, my answer is “no.” I would only sire a child if I was in a committed relationship and if I could actually take part in raising him or her alongside his or her mother.
I was asked once - mostly jokingly, but I think there might have been a small core of seriousness there - and my immediate instinct was to say no. I have no idea why, but it just seemed wrong to me. Looking back on it now, I would still say no, because I think part of being a parent is to take responsibility for that child; you can’t just absolve yourself of it by a deal with the mother.
A long-time friend of mine asked me to (actually, a second one did too, but we never discussed it in depth). I hesitated for a long time, because I would have wanted to be somewhat involved in the kid’s rearing, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for this, because the exact motives of the potential mother were unclear to me (she didn’t have any nefarious motive, but her desire for a child seemed less straightforward to me than what I’ve seen in other women. She’s not typically a child-lover, for instance) and finally because I wasn’t sure it was a good thing for the potential kid to be born out of such an agreement of convenience, and wondered how s/he would react when told how and why s/he was born.
Eventually, I said no. I’m still not sure I made the correct choice.
Another issue with me is that the couple who wants my “life elixir” is currently happy and well adjusted. To the best of my knowledge. I don’t know what happens at night when there’s no company- they may be dysfunctional as all hell, or they may be happy as iguanas in hot sand right now but next year they will be. Also in my particular case it was a lesbian couple which means that they cannot legally marry and in this state and many others only one can legally adopt the child- if there’s a breakup that could be really really nasty with a potential three way custody battle (partner 1, partner 2 and even dad saying “no, you’re not gonna use my kid as a pawn”).
When my Benevolent Oligarchy comes to power I intend to have my 70 official clones who will be reared per my instructions by parental couples chosen from a wide variety of criteria. It will be my way of doing sociological research while at the same time raising a crop of territorial governors and potential heirs. There, however, I know what I’m getting. (Wouldn’t it be odd to have an exact replica of yourself with none of your memories- someone who looks and acts and presumably thinks like you but didn’t have your mother or grew up in a 32nd floor apartment in Boston instead of on an Alabama cattle farm… ooky, really.)